beta

Apple published second betas of all of its operating systems — OS X 10.11.5, iOS 9.3.2, watchOS 2.2.1, and tvOS 9.2.1. There are no new outward facing features that I’ve found so far, apart from one change in iOS.

It appears that iOS is the one which is evolving most of the bunch, not that that’s a bad thing — there’s still a lot of work to do, especially after introducing the new iPad Pro, multitasking features, and external keyboard support. I just hope that Apple doesn’t continue down the path of crippling the Pencil in iOS 9.3…

In addition to the new watchOS and tvOS betas, Apple also released the fourth beta of OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan. Again, this particular beta has no new user-facing features, apart from the ones from the previous betas.

This is the fourth beta of tvOS — I like watching how the Apple TV OS is progressing, even if it is a bit slow for my taste. I’m also painfully aware how lacking it is in terms of features for users in countries such as mine1 — still no Siri, no TV Shows, etc.

If the OS X, iOS and watchOS betas weren’t enough, Apple also released a third beta of tvOS 9.2 yesterday. Since I’m using my Apple TV 4 in Poland, it’s much more limited in its functions that the units being used in USA. This is slightly frustrating, especially since Siri just started working a few weeks ago for the first time, but is still extremely limited in what she can do. Despite this, I love watching tvOS evolve, and since I use my Apple TV every day, I hope it gets better quickly.

I’ve been much more enthusiastic in the new OS X betas than the iOS ones, to be honest. I’m really glad Apple is working on both systems, not only focusing on new features, but also stabilising both platforms. The third beta for OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 was released yesterday and unfortunately has no new goodies that I know of.

There wouldn’t be a watchOS beta without an iOS counterpart — the third beta for iOS 9.3 dropped yesterday as well. There aren’t many new features, but there are some nice tweaks and additions added onto those in beta 2.

Apple released a new beta — the third one — of watchOS 2.2 yesterday, two weeks after beta 2. As it has always been required before, you will be able to update to the new watchOS beta through the Watch.app on your iPhone. Just go into General → Software Update. Your Apple Watch needs to be connected to a charger and has to have at least 50% battery life left.

Apple released iOS 9.2 beta 4 yesterday, adding few new features and instead focusing on bug fixes. The most notable features were added in beta 1 to Safari View Controller: Action Extensions and the ability to long press the reload button to either reload the page without content blockers or to request the desktop version of the site.

When OS X 10.11 El Capitan’s was first released, I was curious as to what Ambient light compensation was, so I started searching what others had written. David Pogue mentioned that it allows for “the screen brightness to adjust with the room brightness,” which is probably incorrect, as that is controlled by the Automatically adjust brightness check box. A few minutes later I found Paul Robinson’s reply on Quora.